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Friday, December 9, 2011

Some time beginning in the late
70's a change began in the genre of Super Hero/Comic Book movies. I think in particular about the first
"Superman" released in 1978.
Then I follow a trajectory that brings us to 1997 and"Men In Black". Within this time
frame superheroes stopped declaiming their lines like politicians on
steroids. They abandoned the cornball
sentiments that are still heard (unfortunately) in the world of politics. Before this sea-change a film might end with
the hero giving the obligatory pretty girl an obligatory super kiss. When the kiss is done, he looks into the sky, eyes narrowed with noble determination, and says the ogligatory closing line:"Now the
world is finally safe from Tyranny."

By
the time "Men In Black" came along, the hero's lines had changed, the
entire tone of movies had changed, so that Will Smith could say something like,
"I hate gettin' goo on my suit when I blast those mothas!"

The
deeper truth that lies behind this change is that pop culture has entered a new
psychological era, the Age of Irony.
Insofar as mass entertainment is concerned, irony is now a more common
dramatic currency than is heroism. We,
the audience, see ourselves more realistically. We are saturated in irony because we know that we are
doomed. We are doomed individually: we
are all going to die. We are
possibly doomed as a civilization, because of the way we have fucked things up.

We
know, or can imagine, many dooms that were hidden before the Discovery Channel founded its empire of info-tainment. We imagine doom by comet impact. We imagine the coming doom wrought by global
warming. We imagine doom by the
explosion of the super volcano simmering under Yellowstone National Park. We
imagine doom by weapons of mass destruction, or malignant microbes. We are a people of a thousand imagined dooms. I have devised a personal
motto: March Cheerfully To Your
Doom. Is there any choice? Or shall we simply proceed to the Age of
Despair and forget about having any fun at all?

I
was curious to see how the producers of "Captain America" would adapt
to our modern ironic sensibilities. The
themes of "Captain America" hearken back to that most heroic and
patriotic era, World War Two. How could they twist this red- white-and-blue superhero into an ironic commentary that would appeal to today's audiences?

The
producers used a simple device, and it worked.
They made the film's action a flashback. Contemporary explorers in some remote shifting glacier discover a
strange artifact sticking out of the ice.
As soldiers rappel down into this artifact, it becomes obvious that it
is a highly advanced aircraft. There is a pilot's seat looking out a giant windshield. We don't see what, if anything, is in that pilot's seat. Scraping away a shallow layer of ice, one of the
soldiers discovers a round device. Is
it a shield? It looks like a
shield. And, by god, it is emblazoned with
the white star surrounded by red and blue circles: the icon of the U.S. Armed
Forces during World War Two.

This
flashback device enables us to look as through the wrong end of a telescope,
witnessing the Age of Heroism through the sensibility of the Age of Irony.

Captain America, played without
hyperbole by Chris Evans, goes about his business

without any bodice-busting
fuss. He's likeable, modest and utterly
committed.

A top secret agency, the Strategic Scientific Reserve, is working with a
brilliant scientist, a fellow who escaped from the Nazis. He has invented a biological technology that
can turn ordinary men into Super Soldiers with super reflexes and super
physiques. The scientist's name is Dr.
Erskine, but we may as well call him Dr. Epstein. We all know he's a Jew, which releases him from the taint of
Germanic Fascism. Meanwhile, the
Germans have an advanced Black Ops club, run by a rogue genius named Johann
Schmidt. Herr Schmidt is at the helm of
his own organization called Hydra. This
Hydra thing is to Nazism as a Great White Shark is to a goldfish.

Now
we throw in a pretty girl. She is an intelligence
agent who liaises with the aforementioned Strategic Scientific Reserve. She's everywhere. She's part of the inner circle, though she doesn't seem to do anything besides be head cheerleader. Heck, she's the only cheerleader. She believes in Dr. Epstein. She
accepts his choice of the first human
subject to undergo the transformation into Super Soldier. This person is Steve Rogers, a weak, skinny
but indomitably plucky 4F washout. The boy weighs maybe eighty pounds in a wet
T-shirt and can't lift a moth without dislocating his shoulder. He has tried to enlist forty times under
forty different names in forty towns, but he's got asthma, heart murmur, flat
feet, bed wetting, 20/80 vision. He's
under weight, under height, has Recalcitrant Plebny, Feline Leukemia, and every
other disqualifier for military duty.

But
he is plucky! Dr. Epstein recognizes
this Pluck as the true ingredient of a Super Soldier. Sure enough, when Steve gets put in the machine and pumped full
of the esoteric hormones, he emerges as a plucky hunk of buff manhood like
whooo hooo! Now his head looks as if it
actually belongs on his body, which was a disturbing artifact of his previous
digitally de-buffed body.

Agent
Peggy Carter loved him before, but now she loves him just as much

and will love him even if the
hormones turn him into a gay guy with a huge body and a tiny pin head.

Here
we go, folks! The elements are in
place. We are now ready for many
chases, explosions, gun fights, grappling and swinging from the bars of
industrial catwalks, plus a few romantic interludes that are always interrupted
before The Kiss can happen. The Kiss
finally happens as Steve Rogers pluckily volunteers to go on a suicide mission
that leads to the surprise denouement of the film.

I
liked the film, (meaning I watched all of it) but the ending left me saying
"HUH?"

I
give the film three muskrats. One of
those muskrats is for the moment when villainous Herr Schmidt tears his own
face off to reveal a red-orange skull with a Michael Jackson nose.